renovating an old house with my boy and some helping hands

Tag Archives: ikea

In spring we planed our kitchen at IKEA. Do you remember?
(I could barely remember all the details we planed… so my first advice for planing your kitchen would be: don’t plan it tooooo long in advance!) But kitchen planing is really so much fun and reminds you of better times to come: living in your dreamhouse, cooking in your dreamkitchen…
Anyway, we planed it in advance and due to our my early-pregnancy downtime during summer we are a little delayed regarding our timetable (ha! as if it ever was on time! It’s a renovation!!!) but we ordered the kitchen 4 weeks ago (we had to wait a few weeks for the countertop to be ready) and within 2 excursions to IKEA we collected all the boxes and stuff we needed to put it together.

And that’s how we started:
First I organized the list of items we got. IKEA seperated the items into little batches for every cabinet and the planed insides. I taped everything on the window to keep an overview.

During the boys’ attic nightshifts Tinka (and Sophie) gave me a hand assembling the kitchen cabinets and all the drawers. It took us the entire week (after work hours) to assemble everything but we made it.
I washi-taped the numbers of the cabinets onto the back of each one so we don’t loose track about which inside belongs into the right cabinet.
Saturday morning we drove over to my uncle and cousins shop to pick up our electical household appliances.After that we started with the assembly of the kitchen cabinets which I’ll share in a seperate post next week.
Stay tuned.

Our next item on the massive to-do-list brought us one step closer to a new home:
We choose IKEA for some obvious reasons: value for money ratio!
Of course I wouldn’t mind to call a kitchen like this or this my own… But to be honest you need to keep our feet on the ground during such a major renovation. So we chose the one-and-only-option for us: IKEA.
Their kitchens are versatile, beautiful, modern, functional and have an awesome quality-for-money-ratio! A few month ago IKEA reinvented their kitchen system in Europe and called it: METOD.
I was afraid that they might also change all the designs of the doors. But they just improved it and I was even happier to see that our favorite finish was still available (just with a different name … I can live with that!)

So we went to IKEA and of course we took the “scenic route” through the whole store (I have to take advantage of having Martin at IKEA with me … that happens only once in a blue moon!)We finally made it through different “apartments” over to the kitchen department.
You need to get a number and within a few minutes a staff will help you.I fell in love with the 3d design called: Herrestad. Unfortunately these are just available in limited range of width so we cannot use them in our kitchen.The best way is to plan your IKEA kitchen is: be prepared! Do your homework!

Start with planing your kitchen roughly at home.
Model the room with the software, measure every window, door and wall and check your supplies (where is electricity or water,..). If you got that, choose the right cabinets and wall units and you can built your dream kitchen with all details. Don’t worry if you have any problems or difficulties. I had some too, but I did my best – saved my sketch online and at the store our advisor Petra smooth away all of my little errors and ajusted everything right down to the last detail! – she is a trooper! (Petra for president – or at least IKEA CEO! Planning a kitchen with great staff makes so much more fun!) She also showed us the details in the sample kitchens.
My poorly designed kitchen looked like a real one within half an hour! Just magic!We got the perfect plan and a shopping list and as soon as our floor is ready we are going to order it! We chose this kitchen (you see me sitting and smiling in the sample kitchen beneath) It’s a simple, modern kitchen and we hope it to be visually-unobtrusive because it’s going to be one part of the big living room.
And of course we left with a few things we bought there… you can’t leave IKEA empty handed, right!?Can’t wait to have the first “Quesadillas and Taco night” in the treehouse kitchen!

Do you remember a few month ago I told you I’m going to share some interior design moodboards every once in a while on atreefor2.
Today I’m going to share a moodboard for the exterior design/garden with you!
Because since we planted our new cherry tree for our balcony a few weeks ago (which is in full bloom now!) I imagine myself on our beautiful new sun deck and I really can’t think of anything else at the moment. It’s literally on my mind everyday (at least every sunny day)! I was raised on the countryside and I’m a true country gal who can’t wait to ran barefoot through the garden as soon as the first sunbeam hits the ground in spring!

I imagine myself sitting under our sunblind construction – we planned on building ourselfs. Houseshaped and made of metal and maybe wood!? Not totally sure about the sunroof yet but you can see on the skribble below how we imagine it to be (maybe a project for next year or winter to weld this construction). Anyway. This summer I’d love to take a seat next to Martin on my new dream Acapulco-style chair (1) or in the beautiful and comfy IKEA’s Högsten chair (2) wearing Andy Wolf shades (3 & 4) and clink glasses with Martin to our new sundeck! A girl can dream right?…

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My name is…

Katharina. I love photography and interior design. I got a tiny old house and a big tree. see the pictures, read the stories, get inspired by all the bits and pieces I collect here in my little corner of the internet. enjoy.